


red sun rises like an early warning

by marquis



Category: Campaign: Skyjacks (Podcast), Illimat (Board Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, it's fine i'm fine, james and johnny are gonna make this completely invalid within the month, sort of? i dont know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 13:28:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18389369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marquis/pseuds/marquis
Summary: Travis makes a bet. For once, he loses.(A quick character study.)





	red sun rises like an early warning

**Author's Note:**

> Title's from "Bottom of the River" by Delta Rae. Thanks for reading!  
> You can find me on Tumblr @leonstamatis.

For all his necromantic dealings, Dref had a surprising lack of understanding of the otherworldly.

Travis knew this, in fact, because of his own attachment to the things beyond the mortal coil, things on which Dref might speak without any idea of the complications or context. It was a lesson Travis had had to learn, on his own, and it had cost him more than he was willing to divulge. More than he was at _liberty_ to divulge.

Gable understood. He knew that, had known that from the instant they met. Something about the way the luminaries touch you, something about the marks they leave behind. He could recognize another victim – or, perhaps in Gable’s case, a willing participant.

Jonnit was something, that’s for sure, but Travis had no idea what or how he’d come to be that way. It was hard to pin him down in a definable way; he had too much of that cheerful, childlike brightness in him to have interacted with any of the forces Travis had met and come out on the other side.

So whenever Dref looked at him, offering suggestions of a solution, a _cure_ … Travis knew better than to trust that. Travis knew better than to nurture the small seed of hope already implanted in his chest, a parasite he had fought off for more years than he cared to count.

You can’t grow a seed in infertile ground. So Travis allowed himself to rot.

Travis hadn’t _been_ Travis, then, not even a Matagot. This was before all of that, before all the names so easily given and lost. This was before he’d ever set foot on a boat, in either the sea or the sky. He’d been young then – though he still looked just as young now, he supposed.

She had been beautiful. The word wasn’t enough to do her justice, but to layer on any more compliments was to complicate the pure, essential sentiment that Travis saw her and wanted.

Not in the traditional sense, either; he had the feeling she would eat him alive, would consume every single soul in the woodland that day and it wouldn’t even be a footnote in her story. He wanted whatever it was that she had, whatever presence allowed the flowers to bloom from the antlers that stretched out from her temples and her voice to echo even at a whisper.

Travis wanted to take a piece of her, more than he’d ever wanted to steal from anyone else. Every watch that lined his pockets, all the pilfered family heirlooms along the shelves of his home – he’d give everything up for it, for that gift. For her.

“You dare to ask such a thing?” The Forest Queen had asked, although her lips had never parted. Her eyes opened like the sun coming out from behind a cloud; Travis felt blinded, scorched, buried beneath the warmth of it. “You believe yourself worthy of my forest, of my gift?”

Her words sounded like birds, if every bird in the world had decided to sing in harmony for just a few soft notes. Her hands were the brown of the earth, her eyelashes littered with spiderwebs. She moved slowly, dust motes drifting around her like starlight.

Travis was transfixed, hypnotized; he pushed through, though it felt like swimming through tree sap. “I _am_ worthy,” he said, though the words came out much less forceful than he’d intended. “Allow me to prove it to you.”

And then she was before him, an Illimat deck in her warm hands. Travis did not remember sitting down, but sit he apparently had, legs crossed and hands resting on his knees. The wooden play board before him did not look carved so much as grown, as though she had commanded it to form this way at its birth. She probably had.

“What shall I receive, if you fail?” she asked. Even as close as she was, her voice stayed soft. It was the sound of mice rustling under the leaves. “What is it you could possibly offer me?”

Travis didn’t know. He thought through the things in his pockets, what little he’d brought with him as he’d fled the obligations of his household that morning. Some cheese, wine. A few coins he’d lifted off a guardsmen at the edge of the woods as he’d passed.

“I have nothing of value,” he admitted. He’d prefer to have lied, but he had the feeling she would see right through it. She would catch every bluff, however small, and he would pay for it. Already he had the sense he was in over his head, but he still hoped. He still wanted.

“I could have your memories, child,” she said, in the same even tone. She seemed to be disengaged from the circumstances, though her hands shuffled the cards too quickly for even Travis’ eye to follow. “I could take your green thumb, so that all you touch turns to ash. I could have your beauty. I could take your youth.”

Travis held four cards in his hand. He didn’t remember picking them up.

“Offer me something you will not miss,” she advised him, sunlit gaze cast down on the board, “and something I have never had before.”

“Take my name.”

She tilted her head up to look him in the eye. This close, he saw she had no pupils. A squirrel disappeared into her tangled hair. “State your terms, mortal. Take your turn.”

“If you win, you get my name,” Travis stated. It felt like a canon had gone off, the way the woods fell silent around him. Shadowy clouds covered the sun, and his opponent cast long animal shadows over the board. “If I win, I rule the forests in your place.”

“You risk much, for so small a reward,” the Queen said. It did not feel as though she were mocking him, but Travis had difficulty knowing for sure. “Sow your seeds, child. Let us play.”

Travis considered himself a skilled Illimat player; he’d beat everyone in his town, and some more besides. Lesser men had gambled away their savings, their grain, all for him to win. But this was no seedy pub, and the creature opposite him was no villager. He found himself pausing more often, found himself struggling to choose the best way forward.

“Tell me of your home, boy,” she whispered, when one of the pauses stretched for too long. “Tell me of your brothers and sisters.”

“Only if you tell me yours,” he muttered, and he was shocked by how raw his voice sounded, as though he’d been swallowing rocks. “Fair’s fair.”

“I have none to tell you of,” the Forest Queen said. There was no sadness in it, only cool and solid fact. “Only I remain, in this place.”

Travis reaped the Queen of Winter, turned the Illimat accordingly. He thought he saw the Forest Queen twitch, saw her mouth turn down in distaste. Whether that was because of the card or the move he’d made, he wasn’t sure.

It didn’t matter. No matter what he did, what resources he stockpiled or held, she was eons ahead of him. It was clear she could have won easily, immediately; but she didn’t, and the game kept going as though no one were gaining any points at all. As though they were playing by different rules.

Perhaps they were.

The sky never changed above them, caught in a dusky twilight of storm clouds and sunset. Travis didn’t know how long he’d been there, how many rounds they’d played; he just knew there was sweat on his brow, collecting on his neck, and before him was a game with stakes he could not understand.

“You were foolish to come here,” she said, when Travis took too long to decide a move once again. It was not a judgement; it was fact.

Travis tried to act like he didn’t believe her. “That depends on your next move,” he said. It was barely a whisper; they both knew he was faking.

It felt like decades had passed before she finally won. She harvested the last of the cards at play, counted out her final points; Travis did the same. And then she moved her token to the neat final notch in the scoreboard.

She didn’t seem to feel anything about it, as though she had done this thousands of times. Maybe she had.

Travis set down his remaining cards. He meant to stand, but found himself kneeling at the Forest Queen’s feet. She tilted his hand up toward her with her sun-warmed fingers, looked down with her orange-yellow eyes.

“You owe me your name, child,” she said, and somehow she sounded almost melancholy. Like she’d hoped he’d win, somehow. “Though you know not what you’re giving up, you must keep your word.”

So Travis said his name. Even now, he couldn’t think of what it had been; it was gone from him, gone to her.

“You will face another hardship for your troubles,” she said, voice like fire crackling. “You have trespassed on land that is not open to you. Such things cannot be lightly forgiven.”

“That wasn’t part of our deal.” Travis knew it would happen anyway, whether he protested or not; arguing with a luminary was bound to be pointless. But he couldn’t just let it happen. “I gave you my name. I didn’t promise you anything else.”

The Forest Queen hummed. It was the sound of hundreds of insects’ wings, and it vibrated through Travis like an earthquake. “There must still be consequences,” she muttered, and her nails pressed into the skin of his chin and cheeks.

“What do you mean?” Travis asked. He hated the way his voice wavered.

“You have given me your name. You may have it no longer.” Thunder rolled in the distance. Travis heard the rain begin to fall, to dance across the leaves, but he felt none of it. “I shall give you a glimpse at the powers you wanted, as you have traveled so far; you will become a beast of the forest, of my world. You will live on, without disease, without change. You will learn what you can of how I live, what has made me this way. And you will find yourself wanting other things, as I have wanted them, without the chance of salvation from your curse.”

She spoke his name, then, the one his parents had given him at birth. And he felt it torn from him, like a rib being pulled from his chest. He felt the blood of his body turn cold, change directions. His body shook, broke, bent; it morphed and mended. And all the while her hand held his face firm, her eyes gazing down at him like fire.

He awoke in the forest, the same as he’d been before. The sun was finally setting, and the birds were calling their mates back to the nest. Travis had stood and shaken the leaves and dirt from his coat and begun the walk home, trying to remember the ghosts of a dream.

And then the night came. And he changed. When he came home the next day, no one remembered him. When he tried to remind them, nothing would come. His name was gone, lost to him. He was nothing.

So he became William. He became James, and Travis; then he was Matthew, then Leon, and Travis once more. And none of the names could stop the changing, or bring back the way he'd been. No Illimat game could win him his past back.

Travis, now, knew better than to think it was a dream. He had lived through countless transformations, tried every remedy. He knew the Forest Queen, knew the nature of her curse upon him. And he knew better than to think there is a solution, anything beyond learning to live with it.

That was what he told Dref and Jonnit, and even Gable. That was what he told himself.

He couldn't afford to believe anything else.


End file.
